Marcia Meier's Blog, in which she writes about writing, publishing, memoir, poetry, and just about any other aspect of life.
You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. - Colette
Here's what I love about this quote: It says go ahead and make a fool of yourself. Everyone does, and it's the only way to learn and grow. I have certainly done my share of foolish things, and I can say often they have taken me in a new, creative and prosperous direction.
“Creativity is a scavenger hunt. It’s your obligation to pay attention to clues, to the thing that gives you that little tweak. The muses or fairies – they’re trying to get your attention.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
When I read Liz Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, I was going through a similar life transition and deeply resonated with the book, as did millions of others. Since then, I have been intrigued to see her interest in creativity become a passion, and I have learned a lot from her. (See her amazing TED talk.)
The quote above, from the October Oprah magazine article about Gilbert and her new novel, The Signature of All Things, is a great reminder to be aware as writers.
Prompts from the universe, your muse, fairies – whatever you want to call them – are real. But hearing them requires slowing down and listening, being receptive to the creative gifts that come to us. Several times I’ve had powerful experiences like this.
More than 20 years ago I wrote a scene in a creative writing class. I really liked it, but didn’t have a clue where to take it. So I put it away and only very occasionally looked at it. I just didn’t know how it would fit into a larger story.
Then, about three years ago, I was in a dream state in the early morning, barely awake, and the story came to me. I watched the entire novel unfold in my mind’s eye. The scene I had written was clearly a prologue, and I knew the entire narrative from that beginning. I woke up and went to my desk and wrote a brief synopsis and a chapter outline. I’ve been working on the novel ever since.
More recently, I needed to work out a problem with a new nonfiction book idea. Once again, the solution – vivid and detailed – came to me in an early morning dream state.
These moments of revelation, bursts of creative genius, happen all the time, perhaps in small ways we might not necessarily recognize as divinely inspired. But I know they are.
From the perfect word suddenly popping into one’s head, to the discovery of a title for that article or book that had remained elusive.
The muse exists. It works. But you have to let it in, be receptive, invite it to inhabit your creative space. Meditation works, so does journaling. I do both. Listening to music, walking on the beach or through the woods also is effective. Any immersion in Nature will invite your muse to visit. Thoreau went to Walden Pond. Wordsworth walked the English Lake District and gazed upon fields of daffodils.
Muses don’t like to be rushed and they don’t come on command. But with a little openness and invitation, they will come.
Melodie Johnson Howe’s latest novel, the detective thriller City of Mirrors, is a fun romp through Los Angeles with an unlikely heroine, the aging starlet Diana Poole.
When the novel opens, Poole is mourning the loss of her screenwriter husband and the even more recent death of her movie star mother. Poole is forced to go back to work and lands a part in a movie. But things begin to go seriously awry when Poole agrees to visit the young star of the film and discovers her body in a dumpster behind her apartment. Poole turns detective, and the more she uncovers, the more things don’t add up, but bodies do.
This is Johnson Howe’s second Diana Poole mystery (the first was Shooting Hollywood, 2012), and its considerable twists and turns will both amaze and delight readers.
Poole is a wonderfully complex character, and Johnson Howe has masterfully captured the angst of an aging actress who’s suddenly alone. She worries about how she’ll support herself without her husband, and frets that the one job she’s been able to land will somehow disappear (it does). Coming to terms with her contentious and tenuous relationship with her narcissistic late mother is an underlying theme that will resonate with anyone who has struggled with an overbearing parent.
Despite her very real fears, Poole is a fearless and smart detective, and Johnson Howe’s brilliant plot keeps Poole – and readers – guessing until the final page. If you love mysteries, this one belongs on your books-to-read list.
This final stanza in Dana Gioia's poem "The Lost Garden" really spoke to me this morning. What a beautiful lyric.
The trick is making memory a blessing,
To learn by loss the cool subtraction of desire,
Of wanting nothing more than what has been,
To know the past forever lost, yet seeing
Behind the wall a garden still in blossom.
(From his collection Interrogations at Noon, Graywolf Press, 2001.)
It's hard to believe, but my writing buddies and I have been coming to Avila Beach to write every six months for nearly seven years. We are back this week, and it is a time I relish for the quiet, the serenity, the opportunity to get away from my office and client work for a few days and focus on my own writing projects.
It's beautiful up here, as usual. We always come up in April and October. Sometimes it's chilly and foggy; often it's sunny and warm. Today it has been both: chill fog this morning dissipating to warmth and sun this afternoon.
The hotel we stay in is on the ocean, so anytime a walk on the beach beckons, you can have your toes in the sand within minutes.
This is a time to breathe deeply, to ponder, to journal, to figure out a writing problem. I'm working on two book proposals, and also planning to write two book reviews and several blog posts.
I've been reading Jon Katz's Bedlam Farm Journal recently. He posts several times a day, and even after only a few weeks I feel I know him and his artist wife, Maria. And I feel I am on a first-name basis with his dogs, Frieda, Red and Lenore, the three donkeys, the sheep, and the barn cats Flo and Minnie.
These past few weeks, Jon has shared the drama of Minnie's run-in with a wild animal of some kind. Her leg was severely injured, broken and mutilated, and Jon and Maria had to decide whether to have Minnie euthanized or have her leg amputated. I've followed the story each day, from their decision to amputate the leg through the surgery and, now, Minnie's recovery back at home.
For the first time in her life, Minnie's in the house, and getting used to the luxuries there. They plan to return her to her life as a barn cat, once she's healed, but I'm wondering if Minnie will choose otherwise.
Meanwhile, Jon writes about the dogs and the sheep, the donkeys and the vagaries of small-farm life, all the while documenting his posts with his photographs.
Over the weekend he blogged about his visit to the University of Tulsa, where he taught a workshop on memoir. (He's the author of 12 books, most of them memoirs and most involving dogs.)
The literary crowd didn't take much to his assertion that he is writing memoir now essentially through his blog. Agents and traditional publishing are things of the past, he told them.
I can't say I disagree with him. I enjoy writing in my journal every day. From now on, I will share more of my thoughts in this space as well. If you're a writer, you have to write, even if the old formats fall away and a new world of online publishing takes its place.
The old system of unfettered gatekeepers has crumbled in all genres, which may turn out to be a very good thing. I know it is for readers, who now have unlimited access to writing that previously might not have made the cut. Some of it may be awful, yes, but there will always also be those singular treasures that no one in traditional publishing was willing to take a risk on. I trust this will be as good for writers as it is for readers. I believe it will be. Time will be the judge. Meanwhile, I'm willing to take a chance on the new world order.
My dog, Chevella, on the beach near Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara. She blasted down the beach to where hundreds of birds were settled on the sand. The birds rose as one, swarmed her and circled around, cawing and crying. She was beside herself, jumping and racing into the waves. It's a dog's life.